Planning our summer run from Port Jefferson (Seatauket Harbor) to Block Island for the last week of August. We are planning a midway overnight or two at Essex CT. Can anyone give me some feedback on if its a nice place to overnight. We will most likely get a slip there as opposed to a mooring for the night.

I think the only game in town for docking is the Essex island Marina. There is also a yacht club there with a dock that can hold a few transients. I have stopped over there may times though not terribly recently, though it's one of those towns where nothing changes.

Charming main street with plenty of little shops. Couple of decent places to eat, CT River museum is worth checking out. Kind of an older, sedate crowd. Not a partying tourist place like Block, more of a blue hair tourist destination.

You might also want to check out the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam. They have a dock, so you could tie up there for a performance. Also on the other side of the river from Essex is the Griswold Museum in Old Lyme. Their focus is on early Post-Impressionnists and Connecticut River painters. Next door to it, The Bee & Thistle Inn (on the Lieutenant River) would be worth taking the dinghy in for dinner. Call ahead and check the tide, though. Old Lyme Marina doesn't have many slips either.

Essex is one of those quaint out of he way little villages that was wonderful before the world found out about it.
If your boat is over 50' you can't take a mooring. You can't anchor and the marinas are very expensive. There is no market anywhere near the waterfront and the two old, historic restaurants serve a lot better atmosphere than food.
A large portion of the boaters on the river are extremely discourteous, to the point of being dangerous, and enforcement of the no wake zone is sporadic at best, with nobody ever getting ticketed, even repeat offenders..
I'm sure others will have good things to say about Essex, Ct. but sadly, I just don't.

If you want to get off the boat and pamper yourselves for a night there is a really nice hotel/marina right near the mouth of the river called the Saybrook Point inn and spa right near the mouth of the river.

We anchored in stonington a few times. Another quaint new england town. The waterfront bar/grille looked the part, but we didn't try it.
If a hoppin place is what you're looking for then pass on thru, go straight to newport!

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